NZ goods at risk as piracy thrives

By SCOTT MacLEOD

One of the main shipping routes for New Zealand goods is emerging as the world's worst hotspot for pirate attacks.

At least one New Zealand shipping firm has boosted security as a result of the increase in piracy in the waters surrounding Indonesia.

A report by the International Maritime Bureau this month showed the Indonesian area had a piracy rate three times worse than any other region in the world.

There were 28 pirate attacks in the first three months of this year, the report said. No other region had more than nine attacks.

Goods shipped between New Zealand and Europe regularly pass through the area.

But spokesmen for maritime safety authorities in New Zealand and Australia said there were no reports of sailors from those two nations being robbed.

Nearly all the vessels on the route are foreign-owned, but New Zealand petrol tanker firm Silver Fern Shipping sends its two vessels through the area for maintenance in Singapore.

General manager Frank Wall said the firm, which employs 110 sailors, had briefed staff on piracy and spent money on security.

A tanker that visited New Zealand two years ago "had to put its foot down off Somalia" when it was chased by pirates, he said.

The bureau report said pirate attacks had tripled in the past decade. The number of attacks in the first three months of this year had already equalled the total for all of 1993.

A total of 145 seafarers were reported killed, assaulted, kidnapped or missing in those three months.

Bulk carriers were the most likely to be hit, the report said. The pirates often attacked in small speedboats, and sometimes threw grappling irons on to the ships.

One of the latest attacks was on March 26, when five knife-toting robbers raided the bulk carrier Leviathan off Indonesia, assaulted two crew and escaped with "loot".

On March 18, six pirates fired rifles at the bridge of the chemical tanker Oriental Salvia off Indonesia.

Bureau director Pottengal Mukundan criticised the two- to four-year jail sentences given to one band of hijackers by Indonesian authorities. He said more needed to be done to prosecute pirates.